COMMENT OF THE DAY: WHITE OAK’S WOULD-BE TALLEST BUILDING 
“So the robo-garage on White Oak will be ‘no taller than 75 ft.‘ ?” That’s about 5 or 6 stories, which is exceedingly tall in that particular location. It will certainly stick out, when no other building in the immediate area is even half that height.” [Donald (not that one), commenting on How Houston’s 2 Planned Robo-Parking Garages Compare in Size] Map showing proposed automated parking garage on White Oak Dr.: Centric Commercial
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Tag: 77007
Here’s what the former Wabash Feed & Garden Store on Washington looks like with a second level stacked on top of its original storefront. Workers are now climbing around the outdoor portions of the new upstairs, setting the scene for what’s coming next.
What exactly they’re planning hasn’t shown up in the form of any physical signage yet, but some digital breadcrumbs dug up by a HAIF poster hint at what they’ve got in mind. Two active Facebook pages — one for something called Warsaw Houston, the other for “Axis & Alibi” currently sport similar branding and claim Wabash’s address as their own. Late last year, another page with the title Van Nuys made its internet debut with a 5701 Washington address, too — but it’s since been taken offline.
5701 Washington
Most of the corrugated metal buildings that occupied the inner sanctum at 620 W. 9th St. are down now, but the hidden Heights compound’s still got its edge. “There are strange things poking up from the fence,” the same ones that have been there for over a decade — reports a reader — sticking up, “like heads on spikes.â€
Actually, not all the props on W. 9th St. east of Waverly are heads; torsos, full bodies, and skeletal figures appear as well, along with some more abstract metalwork:
Neighborhood Fixtures
And that’s all for the 610 Allston St. bungalow Mary Cerruti refused to sell before she was found dead inside it last March. This past week’s demolition comes a little later than Trammell Crow had hoped when it began developing the adjacent 5-story apartment complex off Yale St. in 2013. After the developer’s attempts to buy Cerruti’s 6,600-sq.-ft. lot were rebuffed, it decided to build around both it and the same-sized parcel directly to its south. (Cerruti continued to speak out against the development even after construction began in 2013, appearing publicly at a planning commission meeting that February.)
Now, her property and the one next door have been snatched up by the same owner: Sandcastle Homes, an inner-Loop builder. You can see part of the company’s new 2-story handiwork at 606 Allston St. on the right in the photo above.
It went up over the last few months on what was once vacant land next door to Cerruti’s house:
Holdout No More
The newest work showing at Hiram Butler Gallery occupies a special position on the grounds: It’s right outside along Blossom St., facing the townhouse that River Pointe Church owns and uses for events. (Its main religious campus is in Richmond between Ransom Rd. and 59.) Artist Robert Rosenberg designed the sign for that spot specifically, and Melissa Eason put it together. It now fronts the row of 4 parking spots at the edge of gallery’s property.
Since the church moved in across the street at 4513 Blossom in 2015, those parking spots — along with the rest of the block — have been seeing a lot more car traffic than they used to:
Religious Art
The biggest eye-level change to the former Social Junkie restaurant building is the one shown over the Acura in the photo at top. And while it’s definitely less of a statement than its predecessor — a nod to the Texas Real Estate & Co. office across the parking lot — what exactly it means is more of a mystery. Renovators are still putting the finishing touches on the structure — blackwashed earlier this year — so the lettering could just be a sign of things to come.
Or maybe it’s there to stay, like the 2 Shell Shack signs and adjacent menu teasers that went up not long ago beneath the butterfly roof:
Art Goes Here
COMMENT OF THE DAY: A HIDDEN MEMORIAL DR. DOG SPOT MEETS ITS END 
“I always liked to go to that site with the dog in the winter; not sure why, but because of the slope, mixed with the cold air, it made me feel that I was not in Houston. It was not a well known location unless you lived in the neighborhood, though I did not. Others also played with their dogs there. Another cool hidden spot bites the dust.” [Montrose Resident, commenting on Alexan Memorial Apartments Are Heading to Rice Military] Illustration: Lulu
ALEXAN MEMORIAL APARTMENTS ARE HEADING TO RICE MILITARY 
A group linked to Dallas developer Trammell Crow recently filed plans with Houston’s planning commission to prep the shaded 2.5-acre parcel shown on the map between Sandman and the dead end of Reinerman St. for new apartments under the Alexan name. The complex would be backed by a ramp that diverges from the north side of Memorial Dr. and neighbored by a 3-story building that forms part of the DePelchin Children’s Center’s main Houston campus. Ordered off the site to make way for the new construction: some parking for the adjacent adoption and foster care center and a vacant, H-shaped office building to the west. Map: Houston Planning Commission
 
More than $100,000 worth of liens have now been placed on the stalled Victoria Condos at 829 Yale St. by contractors that worked on the 40-unit midrise. It’s one of the remaining Fisher Homes properties that the Harris County court system hasn’t yet liquidated as part of its ongoing efforts to pay back the developer’s creditors — including some who’ve sued it for failing to pay their invoices on developments such as the Yale condos.
A rendering put out around the time sales began at the beginning of June 2016 shows what they would look like if they had people in them now:
Somebody To Lien On
The former art and event space dubbed the Indian Summer Lodge — tucked in between the MKT Trail and Blue Line Bike Lab on the corner of White Oak Dr. and Columbia St. — is now being shopped around to potential new owners. Pictured at top from the north is the 16,170-sq.-ft. trapezoidal property, home to a Quonset hut (shown above) and adjacent lodge building.
A year after the land was briefly rumored to be taking on the Tacos A Go Go that eventually moved in 4 blocks east of it, proprietor Jeff Law sold it in 2010. Since then, most portions of a third treehouse building that also sat on site and included a rooftop balcony have been torn down.
Here’s what $1,649,000 gets you now:
Indian Summer Lodge
Both Pi Pizza and Star Fish have been locked out of their leases in the Washington Heights shopping center building on Heights Blvd. just south of White Oak Bayou and roughly across the street from the Art Car Museum, leaving the strip absent its 2 endcap tenants. Star Fish picked up where Bradley’s Fine Diner left off in the building’s north side about a year and a half ago, and the pizza parlor took over from Funky Chicken on the south end of things in 2016.
Pictured below is the notice a Swamplot reader found stuck to Pi’s storefront right around lunchtime:
Off the Menu
SIZING UP BROADSTONE ARTS DISTRICT, THE UNBUILT APARTMENTS ACROSS FROM SAWYER YARDS 
328 units will crowd into the planned building according to a rundown of coming Houston residential developments put out by investment firm Berkadia and dug up by HAIF sleuth Urbannizer just the earlier today. (That’s a bit smaller-scale than the 375-unit Broadstone Studemont mid-rise now going vertical on a slightly larger 4-acre block of land half a mile away on Studemont at Summer St.) Although nothing’s changed physically at the site since several warehouse buildings were demolished on it 2 years ago, it has seen some recent action on paper: In March Houston’s planning commission approved a request to consolidate 2 separate, abutting parcels of land into a single nearly–4-acre property on which the apartment will rise just north of the railroad tracks that cross Sawyer St. The property owner: an entity connected to developer Frank Liu of Lovett Commercial and InTown Homes. He’s also got his hands on the 2 warehouses-turned-retail-buildings across the street where new tenants continue to file in, as well as the Salvation Army structure south of them. [Berkadia (PDF) via HAIF] Photo: Swamplot inbox
The owners of the 22,860-sq.-ft. warehouse at the bend where Wash Ave becomes Hempstead Rd. have plans to refashion the building as Houston’s latest food hall, complete with 25-plus restaurant tenants, a few grocery and trinket vendors, and an adjacent beer garden — all fronting 22,000-sq.-ft.-worth of park space. Aside from homonymous salad bar concept Let Us, no specific tenants have been announced for the space yet — formerly home to the Emmett Perry oriental rug store and Sugar Creek Interiors’ design studio. But the developer hints that most food stalls at Railway Heights will be of the fresh-never-frozen variety, staffed by “the farmer who reared the animal, the fisherman who caught the fish, the baker who baked the bread.”
Later on, plans call for a 600-car automatic parking garage (about 2-and-a-half-times the size of that other robo-valet proposed next to Tacos A Go Go on White Oak) to be added on to the site at 8200 Washington, along with a complex of “container apartments” in the southeast corner of the things. Along with the food hall, they’ll all go in the area marked red in the map above, across the train tracks from InTown Homes’ forthcoming Cottage Grove Lake community.
The map below shows how the site will layout in greater detail:
On the Timbergrove Menu
BOBCAT TEDDY’S NEW BCYCLE STATION IS READY TO ROLL 
The recent docking of a new BCycle station outside the former Jimmy’s turned Bobcat Teddy’s Ice House on the corner of White Oak Dr. and Threlkeld St. brings the total number of bike hubs in the system to around 60. Its installation was supported in part by a fundraiser held at the bar last month during which representatives from Texas Gold Sprint’em — an operator that hosts stationary bike races complete with emcees and accompanying AV equipment — were on hand to organize competition. Now that road-ready vehicles are on-site at the venue, they fill in a gap along White Oak Dr., where no other BCycle station currently exists. [Houston City Planning Department; previously on Swamplot] Photo: Houston City Planning Department
Coming soon to the west side of the warehouse-turned-Shops at Sawyer Yards building on the corner of Sawyer and Edwards streets: Awesome Bites, a health-minded bakery specializing in fruit- and vegetable-based muffins made without eggs, butter, or milk. A building permit filed last Friday for the strip at 2313 Edwards — the nearer building in the photo above — has the new 1,600-sq.-ft. venue slotted into suite 185. That puts it west of Pokeology in either the box labelled B above (where B&B Butchers once left its mark but never materialized) or potentially right next door to the raw fishery — if the adjacent, yet-to-be announced taco shop’s plans fall through.
- Reinventing Treats [Awesome Bites]
- Previously on Swamplot: B&B Butchers Bull Marking New Territory in Shops at Sawyer Yards; Where Lovett Commercial Is Really Developing That Restaurant in the First Ward
Images: Lovett Commercial
First Ward
